[Writer’s Workshop] Something I learned about my grandparents

I didn’t know my grandparents that well. Actually, I didn’t know them at all. My mother’s parents both died before I was born. My maternal grandmother actually passed while my mother was pregnant with me. My Paternal grandfather passed away way before I was even a thought. The only grandparent I had was my grandmother from my dad’s side.

When I was younger we would go over to her house and go in the pool. All my Aunt’s and Uncle’s would be there and we would BBQ. We would have a great time and I would see my cousins on almost a daily basis. We would also go to New Jersey, where my mother was from (Please don’t hold it against me) at least once a month and see my mother’s side of the family. We would also have big gatherings and have a great time. Many times the phone call to come over would be at 7am on a Saturday and by 9:30 we would be pulling up to my Uncle’s house.

I loved those times.

As we all grew older, our lives changed. People moved away or were busy with their own lives to be seen anymore. I haven’t seen my family all together since my wedding 3 years ago.

My grandmother was a very difficult woman to be close with. I never had that “grandmother experience” many people seem to have with their grandparents. On Christmas Eve we would all go over my grandmothers little house and get together and exchange gifts but once she turned 86 she told everyone it was too much to have everyone over all together and stopped that. I thought it was weird because she didn’t do anything. All my Aunt’s did all the work and brought over all the food and cooked whatever needed to be cooked and my Uncle’s and father would all do the clean up before we left.

As she grew older she became a shut-in basically. She would never come to family gatherings. She would only stay out for no more than 30 minutes when my Aunt took her food shopping as my grandmother grew up in the Bronx and never obtained her driver’s license. By the time she was 91 she never left her house.

But I have to say, she was a very tough woman. She didn’t show empathy or emotion at all. If she was hurt, you wouldn’t know it. I work in a hospital and see people in the 40’s and 50’s with less ailments then my grandmother had at 94 and she never complained and never acted like these people. She had a walker but never used it. She walked about her house with no issues, but started moving a little slower in her last couple of years.

When she was 94, she fell on her stoop and broke her hip. She went to the hospital and they performed surgery to correct the issue. They were surprised that, at 94, the only issue she had was dentures. She never had heart surgery, she never broke a bone, she was very hard of hearing but she was very with it… when she heard what you said. She even told us one Christmas Eve that when she talked to people, if she ask them to repeat what they said twice and still didn’t hear what you said she would just nod her head and say “yeah” because she knew if it was her repeating she would be annoyed.

When she broke her hip they sent her to rehab and there was some complication with the surgery. They called us and said come down because she probably would not recover from it.

She did.

Then she wound up getting an infection while at rehab and they once again called us and said “She really is not going to recover from this.”

She did.

Then she wound up falling and doing more damage to her leg that they needed to fix. They called us a third time and told us to come in.

She recovered.

As she was getting through her rehab she became depressed. I mean this was a woman who did everything for herself since she was 5. She lived through the depression as a teenager. She had 8 children she raised on her own after my uncle passed.

The depression became severe and my sister told me to go see her, but I was never close with her. She never came to see me any time I was in the hospital and she even referred to us by our father’s name and which kid we were. So I was not Jimmy, I was Ken’s 2nd son. Only my sister was referred to by name out of ALL the grandkids.

She told my sister that she was done. That she lived long enough and just wanted to go be with my grandfather again. I mean I was born in 1970 and he had passed before that. She never dated or was with anyone after that either.

A few days later she passed.

And the thing we found out on 2 separate occasions, unfortunately, was that apparently my grandmother was a sexual dynamo.

One night she was over for dinner and my friend Mark came over. He was joking with her about taking her out with us and her reaction was “Hell yeah! I might even be able to teach you some new things!”. It was shocking to hear that from my grandmother in her mid to late 80’s but it was funny.

And then, when my grandmother was 92, my brother and my sister-in-law went over to my grandmothers Christmas eve early. They were talking and somewhere along the line my grandmother started talking about her sex life with my grandfather. She went into slight *ahem* detail about the size of my grandfathers, uh, well, you can figure it out. And she olso told them about how he liked to drink on the weekends and if she wanted anything she had to hurry and get in the bedroom before he fell asleep. And apparently THAT was why there was such a big age difference between he kids.

I wish I learned some really great life lesson from my grandparents but I only knew one, she didn’t really talk to us kids much and the only thing she informed us of that sticks out is her sex life stories!

I know my daughter will have better memories since my in-laws are both around and awesome people and my Dad is around and he is great!